We're Just Pretenders, You and Me
by libra78
Summary: Amelia can see what Sam's hiding, the grief and loss and the emptiness inside him. Maybe if she just pretends they're okay, one day they will be. Maybe if Sam just pretends he's not falling apart, he'll be whole again. Or maybe not. Season 8, Amelia's POV


**Author's Note:** **Hi everyone! I could not get this idea out of my head so I put it down on paper and hoped it didn't suck! I never really liked Amelia that much just because she was kind of 2D, and the way she was written wasn't very convincing, like I had a hard time believing that she would be a real person. This is probably out of character for her but fanfiction's all about manipulation, right? Heheheh ;) Reviews appreciated greatly!**

 **(Sorry about Amelia N. on the character listings. I know it's for Novak, but there was no option for Amelia Richardson!)**

 **Disclaimer: I'll own it the day werewolves don't rip out hearts and vampires drink gatorade. (So not mine)**

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Amelia worries about Sam. He seems so cheerful and content and anyone else would say he was happy. But she can see the flicker in his hazel eyes, the only part of his face his grin doesn't touch. The flicker of some deeper pain he is hiding, a silent anguish. She knew the look because she had practiced it in the mirror after her husband was killed, the smile that she could never quite get to reach her eyes.

She could never seem to hide that flicker of pain that haunted her when she was alone, when she curled up in their bed and cried until she couldn't breathe. But eventually, it got better. And that's why she worries. He's not getting better.

Sam sometimes gets a faraway look when they're in the car together or walking or watching TV. Like he should be somewhere else, doing something different. Like he's left the burners on and never went back to turn them off. He gets up and mumbles something about needing air, or a walk. Sometimes he doesn't come back for hours. Sometimes for days. She understands, really, she does. But when she asks him about it, tries to get him to open up, he stiffens and winces like she's punched him, and turns away, changing the subject. After a while, she manages to get a little out of him.

He tells her he lost his brother, but he won't tell her anything else, like the hurt is still too raw, the wound is still too open. She waits patiently for him to talk about it, or break down and throw something at the wall like she did, but he never does.

He carries on like he's fine and she accepts it because they do ordinary, intimate things like watching a movie together on the couch, visiting each other at work, or just cuddling close to each other in what has come to be their bed, listening to each other's heartbeats. And when they do those things, Amelia knows that he really loves her and truly wants to be with her, so she lets all the little stuff go and figures he'll deal with the grief how he needs to, and if it doesn't involve her, that's okay, even if it does sting a little. But she still worries.

Until the night she wakes up and the sheets beside her are cold. She gets up uneasily and stops when she hears it. It's a quiet, subdued sound, but she knows it's Sam, recognizes his voice. She follows it into the kitchen where he sits at the table, his head bowed between his arms. She realizes the noises are repressed sobs, sees the tears leaking silently from his eyes.

His whole body shakes like the earth is shattering, the large, gentle hands she knows so well grip a worn leather jacket she's never seen before, holding onto it like a lifeline, fabric bunching between his fingers.

His forehead is pressed to it as he draws in deep, quaking breaths like he's trying to inhale the thing, thumb rubbing across the frayed collar. Her heart aches and she wants to go to him, hold him like no one did for her and tell him everything was going to be all right. But she realized maybe everything wasn't going to be alright, no matter how much either of them pretended. Maybe they were just too broken.

Her breath catches when she sees the edges of a crumpled photograph pressed against the jacket. She's curious but already feels like she's intruding somewhere she's not welcome, something she's not supposed to see.

Sam's muffled cries follow her back to the bedroom where she climbs into bed, pulling the covers over her. She hears him when he comes in and lies beside her, sheets rustling as he doesn't bother to turn on the light. He turns away from her.

When she wakes up, there's a hastily scribbled note saying something about going in early for work. When she calls, his voicemail greets her and his boss tells her Sam never came into work that day. So she worries. It's the first time in a long time he disappears for more than a day.

While he's gone, she searches her closet and finds a cardboard box shoved into the corner. She opens it and pulls out the leather jacket. It smells of whiskey and cheap soap and salty tears and something she can't place. Inside the right pocket are the photographs, and she pulls them out, one by one.

The first is grainy and dark, a small boy with a bowl haircut sits on a dingy stuffed chair with a baby in his arms, grinning toothily at the camera. There's a smattering of freckles across his nose and his eyes shine bright green with happiness, his grip around the tiny baby painstakingly gentle, like it was something that came naturally to him. She turns the photo over to find _Dean and Little Sammy,'83_ scrawled across the right hand corner in neat cursive. She puts it down and pulls out the second photo.

She recognizes Sam instantly this time, even though he's much younger, his hair shorter and shaggier and his eyes not quite so burdened with the things he'd seen. The man next to him seems unfamiliar until she sees the same green eyes and devilish grin as the innocent looking little boy cradling baby Sam.

He's unbelievably handsome now, firm jaw and chin, tanned skin, wearing the same leather jacket she now holds clutched in her lap. His eyes are tilted towards the ground, but he's still laughing matching Sam's wide open mouth as they share some private joke, their mirth forever frozen in time. She turns it over to find ' _07_ across the top border and nothing else. She spares it one final glance before reaching for the last picture.

It's the same man who stood so close to Sam in the last photo, alone this time. He's dressed like Sam likes to dress now, loggers and bootcut jeans and a military jacket over a flannel button-up.

He's older and there are worry lines across his brow and shadows dancing under his eyes, but he's still uncommonly good-looking, and his green orbs still hold some of their spark. The picture is fuzzy, like it was taken with an instant camera.

It's light out, the sun just starting to rise. He's leaning up against the hood of an old Chevy, hands in his pockets, staring off somewhere ahead of him. He looks tired and worn, like he wanted to lay down where he was and never get up, but a soft smile still played around his lips.

She turned it over, expecting just the year which she found in clear print, ' _11_. But underneath it in a half-messy half-neat slant that she knows belongs to Sam was written: _Maybe there's hope._ She stared at the words for a long time before carefully piling the photos together and tucking them into the right pocket of the jacket.

She ran her finger across the scuffed leather before placing it carefully in the cardboard box and hiding the memories back where she found them, away from the light, sitting in a dark corner of her cluttered closet, haunting a dark corner of Sam's mind. Maybe there is hope for him, for her, for them. Or maybe there's never been a reason to have any at all. And she worries about him.

He comes back two days later, full of apologies and evasions but no excuses. She doesn't ask him where he went or what he did because she knows he won't tell her. He walks the dog for weeks afterward and mows the lawn in the early hours of the morning.

The closet door doesn't open and the cardboard box filled with pain stays hidden away in the back corner, goodwill clothing and worn shoes and paid bills piling on top of it so heavily, she can't even see it anymore. She supposes out of sight out of mind, where it hurts Sam the least, dulled to a consistent throb instead of a white hot stab, so that if he tries, with a couple of beers, he can almost forget.

If Sam ever cries again, she never hears him. She never finds the sheets cold again, and now almost every night they're warm with sweat and pleasure and the smell of _SamSamSammy?_ all over. She never calls him that, never mentions it, knowing it would just hurt more.

He holds her afterwards and she rests her head on his bare chest, telling him stories about Don because she might explode if she doesn't, telling stories about her military Dad and religious mom, her decision to go to vet school, college anecdotes filled with friends she lost touch with and teachers whose names she can barely remember. Sam never speaks about himself, offering scarce details when she asks, his mother dying when he was a baby, a childhood spent on the move for his Dad's job.

She can tell he's holding back, that there are things he isn't telling her, will never tell her. Like how she walked in on him spreading salt on all the windowsills and across the door, or how she finds strange symbols carved into the moldings of the house. He never, ever mentions his older brother, bright green eyes and freckles, mischievous flash of pearly-white teeth.

But he listens as he strokes her hair, chuckling softly at the right times and asking her questions, genuinely interested. And so she pretends to be asleep when he calls out his name in the dark, giving him that one small mercy as she listens to the tossing and turning, that one broken sound escaping his lips in a soft cry, choking on it's own grief. _Dean._

She worries about him because there's not much more she can do, only so far she can go when he refuses to let her past the walls he's erected around himself. He lets her into his heart because he's trying to fill that yawning abyss inside him, the one that just grows bigger and darker until one day it swallows them both and they drown in everything they've been holding back. She knows because sometimes she thinks, even though she loves Sam, she's doing the same thing to him.

But she still worries, because even if you already know what's coming, you're still afraid of it. The unknown is terrifying, but sometimes the truth is worse. And the truth is this probably won't end the way either of the wants it to, but they get up in the morning, smile, go to work, eat dinner and go to bed. Because that's what people do, until they can't do it anymore.

She knows that they're reaching the end, just like she knows she'll never completely understand Dean or what exactly he meant to Sam. She knows that she loves Sam and he loves her, but they're both too broken and too lost to be _in_ love. She knows that Sam is never going to be all right, and he can't move on the way normal people could, the way she tried to for him. Sam can never be normal and they're both just pretending they're okay. So she worries.


End file.
